Abstract
In the first article published in volume 1 of Competition & Change, Appelbaum and Henderson (1995: 1) argued that ‘the world economy is in a time of acute and probably unprecedented flux and transformation’. They used a rather grandiose metaphor of ‘the hinge of history’ – ‘a critical turning point around which history is turning’. Just over 20 years on we would certainly agree with the notion that flux and uncertainty remain central features of a global age. But the metaphor of a ‘hinge of history’ has perhaps turned out to be less helpful. ‘Hinge’ seems to imply a mechanism that unfolds in two opposite directions with perhaps obvious, dramatic or definite results either way. Yet globalization seems to have opened out into an infinite array of indeterminate directions, as noted by the rise of the use of the word ‘globalizations’ in the plural rather than the singular (Gills, 2004).
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 3-9 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Competition and Change |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 25 Nov 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2017 |